THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES Review

I have become less and less enchanted with Peter Jackson's prequel trilogy the more and more we get of it. Thankfully, The Battle of the Five Armies will be our last trip to Middle Earth (if at least for some time) for the more Jackson and company string out their financially successful series the more he seems to discredit the genuinely engaging and handsomely made films that started it all. There was always great hope for an adaptation of The Hobbit given it would return Jackson to a place he clearly has a passion for, but a lack of care also seems to be the source of trouble with each new chapter in this prequel trilogy. It feels as if each movie hinges on one or two major set pieces allowing it to deliver what audiences expect while the remaining hour and a half is left to be filled with subplots that are either unnecessary to the main narrative or feel forced in so as to simply extend the running time. Is it required a film must be two and a half hours for it to feel epic? Peter Jackson seems to think so, but as Battle of the Five Armies comes in at two hours and twenty-four minutes it is by far the shortest installment and at the very least, feels like much of a relief because of it. I didn't like a lot about this final chapter. I wasn't impressed with the structure of the story or the organization of the titular five armies (if you haven't read the book you'll be left wondering who exactly the fifth army even is) and more than anything it was frustrating to see a maguffin as obvious as "Dragon Sickness" pit Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) against seemingly everyone else in the entire movie, even his fellow dwarves. Certainly, some of the blame for this can be placed on all of the rules, worlds and ridiculous names that author J.R.R. Tolkien originally came up with, but with as much of a beast as Jackson has turned this small, three hundred page introductory novel into I'm willing to place most of the blame on he and the studio for compromising much of the stories merit for greed. I understand the reasoning, I realize there is a business aspect to it all and that by splitting the planned two films into three allows this third films box office to generate pure profit, but that doesn't mean I sympathize with the decision because while they get extra cash on their Christmas bonus, audiences everywhere are short-changed by this insufficiently justified chapter.

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG Review

Usually, I'm rather fond of middle chapters in these serialized movies that seem to come in more than threes these days, but there is something distinctly offensive about this second installment of Peter Jackson's return to middle earth. First off, and I stated this in my review of last years An Unexpected Journey, we knew at some point that the fact a trilogy of movies, at three hours a piece no less and drawn from a 300-page book and its appendices as well as further Tolkien notes was going to begin to feel a bit drawn out and if anything re-enforces that fact better it is the last half hour of this film. It literally felt like the first two hours flew by; it had my attention, my appreciation and even my interest (for the most part), but when our heroes finally reach the mountain and encounter the dragon whose name plagues the subtitle it goes on, and then it goes on a little more, and then it continues. It is over-indulgence at it's finest and seems to exist solely for the fact that Jackson and his team of writers might feel they've placed a large enough action sequence near the end of the film to serve as the big climactic set piece when in reality all it does is feel like they're really trying to make you feel that two hour and forty minute runtime. If they'd only just teased the entrance into the kingdom under the mountain and been fine with a just over two hour movie all would have been better off, though the cliffhanger even more ridiculous, I admit. Which brings us back around to the point that there was no need for more than two films based off this book in question. It is what it is and we can't change the greedy minds in Hollywood now that they will have plagued the credibility and artistic achievements of Jackson's Lord of the Rings films with these sub-par prequels. It is simply spreading the butter too thin and though I assume many of the fans of Tolkien's work might find it enthralling to be wrapped up in not only what was on the original page in The Hobbit novel, but to see that world fleshed out with his later writings that built a further and more dense mythology for middle earth might be ecstatic and find these to be on the same level as Jackson's previous trilogy, but as pieces of individual cinema this second installment fails on the most basic of levels.